I am the cup of water without the cup [or William Kentridge, Steven Cohen, Louis Burke and me (or William Kentridge, Steven Cohen, Louis Burke and Him...)]

Abstract:

How do I see myself -as I am: As shifting, fluid, resisting and accommodating; an integrated identity by negotiating what is me with others through a series of events that I respond to as they happen, as I make them happen thus informing me of how I see myself as I am. I am the upstart. The title of this paper is derived from bohemian and poet Phillip O'Connor, who in his memoir Memoirs of a Public Baby (1958) wrote: " I was-and am-like a cup of water without the cup and dangerously flowed into other people's being" (first cited in Andrew Barrow 2002:56). It is a witticism that provokes empathy of the self-asserted marginal and hopes to prove that even within the marginalised there are even further marginalised organisms (including how I see myself). How did I come to this? I trace this view with autobiographical events informed by redemptive criticism in an attempt to understand how I see myself as marginal and embrace myself as such. I intertwine this assumption with readings from Hannah Arendt, Della Pollack and Barbra Myerhoff.